


Retributive Justice

by last_illusions (injured_eternity)



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-18
Updated: 2009-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:51:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injured_eternity/pseuds/last_illusions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the sixteenth of July 2011, his worst nightmare comes true. It's fear for others that often paralyses us, rather than fear for ourselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retributive Justice

On the sixteenth of July 2011, his worst nightmare comes true. In the middle of hunting a kidnapper taking boys between five and ten years of age in Virginia and its surrounding area, he gets a phone call. It’s Haley.

“Jack’s gone, Aaron!” she sobs into the phone. “Someone took him!”

He freezes. Rossi, walking with him, suddenly realises he’s stopped and turns back, concern etched across his features. Hotch gets her off the phone, makes her call her sister, and then the team is on its way to the house she’d gotten in Richmond. He hates this, his private life laid out in the open, but he doesn’t have time to think about that. JJ and Morgan talk to Haley; Prentiss and Reid search the house; he and Rossi talk to the neighbours and search the grounds.

Seven hours later, Garcia calls Rossi, an unusual move. “I don’t know how to tell Hotch this,” she says. He knows, because he’s standing at the older man’s shoulder and can hear her straight through the phone. Eight years ago, he hadn’t been able to save Hector Sarven’s son; to make it worse, he’d had to arrest his _other_ son. Now, Sarven is after him, but he wants to do it through Jack. Unfortunately, he has him.

When they track him down at an old house near Shenandoah, Sarven is waiting. They get as far as the front gate, he, Morgan, and Rossi, guns drawn. Then Sarven steps onto the porch with a knife pressed to Jack’s throat, and Hotch realises he can’t move. The greying man with a slightly crazy look in his eyes is going on about outliving your children and retributive justice, and all he can do is stand there with his service weapon trained on him; he can’t pull the trigger.

As the furious man starts waving the knife around while he talks, ignoring Rossi’s attempts to talk him down, Jack finds his father’s gaze.

 _Daddy_.

The word is only mouthed, but it’s enough, and Hotch revives enough to pull the trigger. Sarven goes down with a bullet in his shoulder, and Jack runs for his father, silent even in his fear. He’s his father’s son. As Prentiss stands over Sarven, waiting for the ambulance, Hotch gives Jack to Rossi for a moment and walks over.

“You can join your sons in jail,” he says quietly, standing over the other man’s body, and then he turns on his heel and walks away.

  
 _Finis._

 _Feedback is always appreciated._


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